


Streets

by MJ (mjr91)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Bisexual Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr., M/M, Pre-Relationship, Rafael Barba Not Being A Jerk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 03:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12224802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjr91/pseuds/MJ
Summary: Sonny Carisi's great at undercover work for SVU.  He may be drawing on personal experience. After a trial, Barba asks.





	Streets

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't help it. The sex worker trope wanted to play some more.

Detective Dominick “Call me Sonny” Carisi, Jr. trotted down the corridor of the courthouse trailing after ADA Rafael Barba. How a man that fast, with legs that long, couldn't keep up with the shorter one when he was on a tear, was a mystery even to him. It might have been a puzzlement to Barba as well, had Barba ever stopped to contemplate it, which he decidedly hadn't. It wasn't his fault that no one was ever able to keep up with him. That applied to many things, not just to speedwalking through courts.

Keeping up with Rafael Barba – did one try it sartorally? That was a nice trick if you could do it. But dressing that well wasn't easy. Keeping up with his bite? Score one for Carisi, if one were in fact keeping score, which Barba decidedly wasn't. Keeping up with Barba intellectually? Despair of the concept, o world, and weep – although he'd never admit that Rita Calhoun had run a few good rings around him from time to time, or that some detective who was only a recent night law school graduate had massive potential in the same regard. 

It really, quite simply, was almost impossible to keep up with a man as wired as Barba. If mainlining coffee, and having a blood type that was probably pure Maxwell House drip grind, was what did that to him, it was a good thing that it wasn't the Eighties, when every even vaguely hyper attorney in Manhattan kept their edge sharp on Monday mornings with the help of monogrammed silver short straws and a pile of blow. Barba most likely would have been a blur in the days before drug testing, if he'd followed suit. Caffeine was bad enough.

Barba knew Carisi was on his heel, following. “Good job testifying, Detective. That was a nice piece of undercover work, by the way. I suppose we should be thankful that Rollins has good aim. I don't need the only detective at SVU who can bring me a clean case bleeding to death from amputated genitalia.” Both men stopped short for a second – the image was painful all by itself. Carisi had played hustler tracking down a john whose major kicks seemed to come from dismembering street boys. He'd had to go off with several guys who'd fit the profile – no one was asking any questions about what had gone down with the ones who hadn't been the perp, you didn't ask anyone who did undercover regularly things you didn't want to know unless the facts were crucial – but it had taken a while to reel in the one who'd tried tying Carisi down and pulling out the surgical equipment. Carisi still insisted that he hadn't needed Rollins winging the guy to bring him down, that he'd had it under control all along.

“Yeah, it got a little freaky there for a bit,” Carisi conceded.

Barba fished for his phone, checking a text. “I'm heading back to my office. If you want to come along, I can have Carmen send out for lunch for both of us. You got any place to be?”

Carisi checked his watch. “Far as I know, I got time. Sure.” They headed outside and down the steps, cutting over to Hogan Place, while Barba placed a lunch order with his assistant. Carmen knew everything about Barba, down to his shirt size (she has multiple hiding places in the office for new dress shirts in case of emergencies); she knew Barba hated mayo on his sandwiches, liked his fries brown, and his Chinese takeout had better be spicy with noodles. Since Carisi's shadowed Barba a few times, has helped with trial prep a few other times, she'd started to learn his quirks too – extra duck sauce for egg rolls, pastrami on pumpernickel with mustard, and an ability to drink non-caffeinated beverages and even cold ones. She knew Barba believes as an article of faith that drinking soda before noon leads to complete moral depravity, and as an even stronger one that if he personally consumes it in any quantity, he may become a degenerate who wears dirty trench coats and drinks from paper bags, loitering behind bus stations. Lucia Barba made a real dent in his brain on that one. Barba was out of the closet and fine with being the token out male ADA, but Coke? That was a whole different moral issue. Soda didn't even get used as a drink mixer in his world. Carisi had never met Lucia Barba, but he was sure she's a whole universe apart from his mother. When lunches got delivered with cans of soda, Carmen gave them all to Carisi, and Barba looked at him as if he were sprouting two heads.

They camped out in Barba's office, waiting for Carmen to confiscate bags of booty from the deli delivery guy, while Barba, to no one's surprise at all, poured himself a cup of coffee and pours one for Carisi as well, possibly hoping to add years to Carisi's life span by weaning him off of carbonated beverages and on to Barba's coffee, which is markedly superior to anything they make at the precinct.

“So,” Barba observed as he handed the basic fluid of human life to Carisi, “like I said, good work. You have got to be the only undercover around who can pull off a sleazy middle-aged straight john from New Jersey and a relatively young street hustler in the same year. And you don't even have a makeup artist.”

“It's the hair,” Carisi snarks. “Slicked back is straight Jersey dude. Slightly curly is my hustler vibe. All there is to it.”

“I thought your secret collection of vintage polyester leisure suits was your New Jersey disguise.”

“Only if I'm desperate to guarantee I can only get laid if I pay for it,” Carisi bites back, without heat. “No self-respecting woman or man would give it up for free to a guy in beige polyester.”

“True,” Barba agreed, easing himself into his desk chair. He must have pulled something in court; his back hurt slightly. His office was painkiller central; every other ADA stopped by to check out his stashes of pills. Motrin? Anaprox? Tylenol? Actual aspirin? Secret stash of prescrription Tramadol? Migraine pills? Three kinds of stomach medicine? Everyone knew Barba was the floor's pharmacist. He reached for a bottle of something – anaprox? Time to take two. “Did I hear you refused to help vice with that sting operation last month, by the way?”

“Yeah,” Carisi told him, stirring his coffee. “I like taking down the pervs like this dude, getting them off the street. I like getting pimps behind bars. But hell – busting some poor john because he wants to get a blowjob his wife won't give him? No. Popping a hustler or a street girl for soliciting? Hell, no. The way I see it, everyone's got a right to make a buck. They got a drug problem, they got a family problem that's got them on the street? Help 'em out, don't stick 'em in jail. I don't even know why we don't legalize it all and then have people get licenses. Have 'em see doctors regularly, and all that. Works in Nevada. Why do we blow money and resources on putting them in jail when there's real criminals we need to get? Just because they scare a few tourists when they work the wrong corners? Fuck that.”

Barba looked across at the detective. “You're right, you know. Totally. I feel like shit when I have to tell a judge that some girl with a drug problem and a pimp who's beaten a hundred girls before her, maybe killed a few, belongs in a lockup. Dealers and pimps are the problem, not her. But don't ever tell anyone I said that. It'll ruin my reputation as a hell hound.” He drank more of his coffee. “But I don't usually hear your side of the aisle defending the sex workers.”

Carisi shrugged. “Used to be one.” Barba raised an eyebrow at him. “No, really. I'm one of four. My parents? They're working class, lower middle class Italian Catholics. Dad's a union guy, paid pretty well, but still. Mom's clerical. Four of us to feed, dress, put through college? I got a partial scholarship for CUNY but it wasn't like I really had money for things like beer, burgers, or my share of the rent on the off-campus housing. Hustling paid the bills for me to finish school. I'm not exactly proud of it, I don't tell people, and I sure as hell lied to my parents, but it got me through.” He glanced at the prosecutor. “And you're one of the only two people I've ever told, since college.”

Barba shrugged non-judgmentally. “Trust me, I know. About college expenses, that is,” he coughed. “I had to make it through Lehman on a partial scholarship myself. My father was out of the picture, my mother was a schoolteacher in the Bronx. Partial doesn't cut it when you don't have money to begin with. And if you work enough at a straight job to pay all of your bills, you don't have time to be in school full time, and then you lose your scholarship. It's not easy. I'm not going to say you were wrong.”

“How'd you get through?” Carisi asked, curious.

“This and that – fairly literally. Whatever I could get, which wasn't much for a Cuban kid with a smart mouth.” Barba trailed off, quiet for a moment. “You're what, about ten years younger than I am? I'd think, about ten years before you were working the street...” He looked up at nothing in particular, clearly reminiscing. “There was a pretty well-known Cuban hustler back then, worked the bars, not the streets. You used to hear a lot about him. He'd hit the bars, guys would start fighting over him, and he'd leave with whoever flashed the most cash. A lot of kids from the Bronx thought that was the way to go. It wasn't, of course, but like you said, bills. Making it wasn't any easier when I was trying to get through.”

Carisi practically glowed. “Hey, I heard about him. There was this slightly older guy, called himself Rod, worked some of the same corners I did, who talked about that guy. Carlos the Cuban, I think he said the guy's name was? Worked the clubs for a few years, then disappeared. Shit, he must have made a fortune. Wonder what happened to him. I made it through, but everyone doesn't.” He slumped suddenly at the thought. “Like the guys this bastard got to before I nabbed him.”

“You did, though,” Barba reminded him. “A lot of guys are going to stay alive because you did that.” He paused. “As far as the legendary Carlos goes, I have it on good authority that he got out of the business and moved.”

“You knew him?”

Barba shrugged one shoulder, quirking his lips. “I may have. I understand he may have moved to Boston or thereabouts.”

“Boston? Weird. Wonder what he did once he got there.”

“I think,” Barba said very slowly, not looking at the wall that held his diplomas, “that he's back down here now. And I think he'd be very happy to know that someone else who got out of the business is helping put scum like our last defendant behind bars.”

“I think,” Carisi told Barba, equally slowly, and quite emphatically looking over at a sheepskin with the name “Harvard” on it, “that I'd really like to know someone like him a lot better.”

Carmen knocked, then entered with deli bags, and slid out of the office quietly.

Barba looked over at Carisi. “I think he'd feel the same way about you.” He opened a bag and looked in. “And this pumpernickel has got to be yours.”


End file.
